Science

Learn about a unique collaboration between the Surui tribe and Google Earth Outreach. The partnership, a result of Chief Almir Surui’s request that Google help raise visibility for his tribe, involves training the Surui people to use Internet technology to protect their forest, preserve their culture, and empower their people. Support Materials include a lesson guide and student handout.

Since Chief Almir first contacted Google five years ago, their partnership has flourished. The Surui have created a cultural map in Google Earth to preserve their knowledge of their territory including plants, animals, and historic sites. They are also using Android devices equiped with ODK (Open Data Kit) to monitor illegal logging and measure the biodiversity and carbon stocks of their forest. Support Materials include a lesson guide and student handout.

Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home. This excerpt deals with the incursion of the outside world into the people who lived in the forest, starting in 1907.

Learn how infectious diseases impacted the Surui tribe after first contact in 1969 with colonizers and how this struggling community coped with the death and loss that followed. Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world.

Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world. From Chief Amir Surui's embattled efforts to stop illegal loggers to the assassination of legendary rubber tapper Chico Mendes, this poetic and visually stunning film engages our senses and sympathies as global issues take on a profound human perspective.

Rubber tapping used to be a sustainable process at the turn of the century, but the growth of industry and outside culture in the forest seeded conflict between rubber barons and the indigenous communities. Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world.

A visit to the town of Cacoal shows just how much the Amazon has changed over the last few decades, and how the influx of manufactured goods, materials, and beliefs has impacted the indigenous community. See how the old traditions have been shaped by this new influence, and through the lesson plan below, explore the difference between things that we want and things that we need.

Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world. From Chief Amir Surui’s embattled efforts to stop illegal loggers to the assassination of legendary rubber tapper Chico Mendes, this poetic and visually stunning film engages our senses and sympathies as global issues take on a profound human perspective.

Explore the impact of the changes in the Amazon ecosystem and how a culture connects together with the roles, rights, and responsibilities of the planet. Children of the Amazon invites you to see through the eyes of these inspiring and remarkably resilient people whose lives are transformed by a road carved through their forest home by an outside world.

Since July 1972, NASA's Landsat satellites have gathered images over the entire land surface of the Earth, creating the most complete record ever assembled. These images, archived at United States Geological Survey, reveal dynamic changes over time due to human activity (deforestation, urbanization) and natural processes (volcanic eruptions, wildfire). Now, Google Earth Engine allows scientists, researchers and the public to easily view and analyze this treasure trove of planetary data.